Off the Shelf: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

August 19, 2007

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

by Marisha Pessl

"Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly." (p. 66)

Barely making it to page 100, I find the author has read too many books in her very young life that it spills over her writing. She is too wordy for my taste. If you can stand compound sentences compounded at least a hundred times over, then you might just make it to the final period. Expect kilometric sentences as major staple such as this one:

"In her absorbing memoir, There's a Great Day Coming Manana (1973), Florence "Feisty Freddie" Frankenberg, a 1940s their-girl-Friday actress whose great claim to fame was appearing on Broadway with Al Jolson in Hang on to your Handkerchiefs (she also palled around with Gemina Cervenka and Oona O'Neill), wrote in Chapter 1 that at first glance, Saturday night at the Stork Club was an "oasis of rarified fun" and that, despite WWII grimly unfolding across the Atlantic like a telegram delivering bad news, when one was in a "new gown, perched on those comfy banquettes," one had the feeling "nothing bad could happen" because one was protected by "all the money and the mink" (pp.22-23)." (p. 142)

Nonetheless, I am determined to finish this one. The plot which is beginning to take form on page 103 reminds me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt.